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The Philippines 



WHAT IS DEMANDED OF THE UNITED 

STATES BY THE OBLIGATIONS OF 

DUTY AND NATIONAL HONOR 



BY 



M. Russell Thayer 

A.M., LL.D. 



Phti,adki,phia, Dkckmbh;r, 1898. 



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I dedicate these pages to the Pennsyl- 
vania Soldiers, who, with their comrades from 
other States and of the regular army, are 
now upholding the flag of the United States 
in these distant seas. 

M. RUSSELL THAYER. 
Philadelphia, Dec. 7, i8<)8. 



THE PHILIPPINES. 



WHAT IS DEMANDED OF THE UNITED STATES BY THE 
OBLIGATIONS OF DUTY AND NATIONAL HONOR. 



By the Providence of God and the unfore- 
seen issues of the war, but by no fault of ours, 
we have unexpectedly, and without any previously 
formed purpose or concerted plan, come into the 
possession of a group of islands in the Pacific, 
occupying an ocean area of fifteen degrees of 
latitude and ten of longitude, with a land surface, 
according to maps made in 1882, of 114,000 square 
miles. First revealed to the civilized world by the 
great Portuguese navigator, Magellan, who lost his 
life there in 1521, the Philippines, after having been 
for three hundred years under the dominion of 
Spain, have come into our possession as one of the 
unexpected results of the war waged with Spain to 
liberate Cuba from a tyranny more oppressive, 
more cruel, and more barbarous than any other 
recounted in modern history — a tyranny which 
not only seized and appropriated, with robber-like 



rapacity, the property and material resources of 
her people, but turned their country — a natural 
paradise — into a Golgotha, white with the bones 
of its defenceless victims. The spectacle of the 
wholesale slaughter of unarmed men, women and 
children by the remorseless order of a Spanish 
Governor-General of Cuba, driving from their 
humble homes by thousands inoffensive and un- 
armed peasants and their families, to perish by 
starvation, exposure and disease in the pestilential 
purlieus of the large cities and towns, was one so 
barbarous and pitiful that it shocked the civilized 
world. It was a crime of such stupendous propor- 
tions that it filled to*overflowing the cup of Spanish 
misrule in the island of Cuba. 

Other nations began to regard with wonder the 
attitude of forbearance so long maintained by the 
United States in the face of these appalling attroci- 
ties. These crimes were committed at our own door 
and under our very eyes. They involved not only 
the destruction of the natural and civil rights of an 
entire people, but the almost total extinction of a 
flourishing trade and commerce which had long ex- 
isted between Cuba and the United States, as well 
as heavy and irremediable losses to American citi- 
zens prosecuting their lawful business in the island 
of Cuba. That our interference was peremptorily 
demanded by the highest obligations of humanity 
and national duty, in order to put an end to the 



horrors of Spanish rule in Cuba, no impartial and 
reasonable person, who believes in God, in justice, 
and the inalienable rights of humanity, ought to 
doubt. The Government of Spain having, after 
repeated expostulations, evinced no other disposi- 
tion than to continue the slaughterings, the burn- 
ings and the devastations which had laid waste the 
island and depopulated its fairest regions, no other 
resource remained but the armed interference of 
the United States. The Spanish war was the 
result. 

No war was ever waged for a more just or 
sacred cause or for a nobler end. The nation felt 
this from its centre to its remotest borders. The 
call of the President thrilled the country like an 
electric shock. Thousands leaped to arms and 
wheeled into column ready to march at the first 
sound of the trumpet — more thousands volunteered 
for duty than could be accepted. The patriotism 
of the country broke down all sectional boundaries, 
imaginary or real, and burnt up instantly in its 
fierce flame all political, sectional and geographical 
differences and prejudices. The soldiers and the 
sailors who marched for the liberation of Cuba were 
animated by the same spirit which animated the 
President. They maintained and, indeed, sur- 
passed the reputation of their ancestors for valor 
and coolness in the presence of danger. Providence 
smiled upon our arms, for our cause was the cause 



8 

of Heaven, humanity and justice. The war was 
conducted with such vigor and rapidity that in a 
single summer it was brought to a victorious con- 
clusion. Two powerful fleets of the enemy, one in 
the Eastern, the other in the Western Hemisphere, 
were so totally destroyed that not a single ship of 
either squadron escaped complete and absolute de- 
struction. Both fleets, and every ship of both 
fleets, now lie rotting at the bottom of the China 
and Caribbean Seas. Our land attacks were equally 
successful, but the victories were won by hard and 
persevering valor — a fearless valor that would not 
yield to any danger, or difficulty, or hardship, and 
at the cost of many lives of brave men. It was a 
sharp, short and decisive conflict, reflecting a fresh 
glory upon our arms and astonishing the world 
with the speediness and completeness of our 
victory. 

When war was declared it was the duty of 
the army and navy to strike the enemy wher- 
ever he could be found. Admiral Dewey, then in 
the Eastern Seas with his squadron, struck the 
enemy so suddenly, and with such a heavy hand, 
that the inhabitants of Manila were scarcely awake 
in time to witness the burning and the sinking of 
the Spanish fleet. And so it happened that one of 
the unforeseen results of the war was the capture 
of Manila by the navy and army and the utter 
prostration of the Spanish power in these islands. 



We have thus, by the valor of our sailors and 
soldiers in both hemispheres and b}^ the unlooked 
for incidents of the war, come into the possession 
of a vast island territory in the Pacific Ocean, 
formerly owned and governed by the enemy — gov- 
erned, as they were accustomed to govern their 
colonies, by absolute power and with a cruel, ex- 
acting and remorseless tyranny. The question 
now arises, " What shall we do with these islands ?" 
— now ours by treaty as well as by arms, by pur- 
chase as well as by capture. ''Abandon them !" 
says Governor Boutwell, of Massachusetts, in his 
recent address to the Boston Twentieth Century 
Club. "Abandon them !" is echoed by another 
Massachusetts statesman, from the rural districts 
— the echo, however, like all other echoes, seem- 
ing to grow fainter day by day, until now it is 
well nigh lost amid hesitating explanations and 
apologies. "Abandon them !" cry two or three 
other gentlemen of distinction and experience in 
public affairs — one of them, at least, a statesman 
who has seen long service, and upon whose judg- 
ment in civil affairs we have been accustomed, for 
m^ny years, to rely with great confidence, and 
whose patriotism we know to be as genuine and as 
ardent as that of any man who has been in public 
life in our time. 

Well, let us see — let us consider what this prop- 
osition means. If we are to abandon the islands. 



lO 

to whom shall we abandon them ? Of conrse, it 
must be to the enemy from whom we wrested them. 
It would be absurd to talk of abandoning them to 
anyone else. Of course, if we simphr sail away 
and leave them, that means that the Spaniards are 
to return with such ships as they have left, or can 
buy, and with them and their army of veterans 
reduce the islands and their inhabitants to their 
ancient subjection, to set up and perpetuate the old 
tyranny which the natives vainly attempted to 
throw off before our intervention. 

That is the plain meaning and the necessary re- 
sult of the proposition. It can mean nothing else. 
It can have no other outcome. We are to turn 
over the people whom we have liberated, and whom 
we armed to defend themselves against the com- 
mon foe, to their old taskmasters and oppressors — 
the Spaniards. We were victorious. We broke 
their chains. We delivered them from the hated 
thraldom of Spanish Governor-Generals and their 
army of ravenous tax-gatherers and civil and mili- 
tary bullies, which devoured their substance like the 
locusts of Egypt, trampled upon their liberties and 
harrassed their lives. This is to be one of the 
fruits of our victory. This is to be the end of our 
war for liberty and humanity — the result of all our 
sacrifices and toil and expenditure — the harvest of 
glory to be reaped by a powerful nation, which 
lately startled the world by its appearance upon 



II 

the scene as a youthful Goliath, equipped for battle 
against foul wrong and injustice. And those 
who advise us to this shameful and cowardly sur- 
render, tell us in justification (i) that it is against 
the policy and traditions of this government to 
make acquisitions of foreign territory ; (2) that the 
Monroe doctrine will be in danger ; (3) that the 
islands will be an expensive possession ; (4) that 
the climate is too hot for us to enjoy living there ; 
(5) that we shall be at odds with other powers, and 
much more argument of the same sort — the sum 
of all of which is that we are to be frightened from 
our duty and to steal away in a cowardly manner 
from the responsibilities which have been fastened 
upon us by the unexpected events of the war. 

Traditions ? What traditions ? Cannot these 
gentlemen who prate of traditions see that the 
word suggests the very strongest argument against 
their theories ? Where, they say, do you get your 
authority for the purchase of sovereignties from 
other nations ? Your right to acquire them by suc- 
cessful war, or the right to extend your authority 
over people never before subject to your rule? 
Well, let us see. Was the acquisition of Louisiana, 
by the cession of France, in consideration of the 
payment by us of twelve millions of dollars, in 
1803, an unlawful act? If not, why should that 
of the Philippines be such in 1898 ? What of 
the purchase of Florida from Spain in 18 19 for 



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five millions ? Was that also contrary to tradition 
and to the Constitution and the laws ? — a mere 
unjustifiable usurpation of James Monroe and 
his Congress ? If not, why should the twenty 
millions proposed by the Peace Commission, to 
be paid for a quit-claim deed to the Philip- 
pines, be so denominated ? After the defeat of 
Mexico and the conquest of her capital city by 
General Scott and our brave fellows behind him, 
was it lawful for the United States to acquire New 
Mexico and Upper California from our late enemy 
by the treaty of Gaudalupe Hidalgo, in 1848, 
for fifteen millions of dollars ? Was that, too, 
an unlawful acquisition and against our tradi- 
tions ? If not, then why should that of the Phil- 
ippines in 1898 be so characterized ? Was the pur- 
chase of Alaska from Russia during the adminis- 
tration of Andrew Johnson in 1867, ^^^ seven mil- 
lions and two hundred thousand dollars, also un- 
lawful, unconstitutional and contrary to our tradi- 
tions ? It is remarkable, too, that its opponents 
forgot to urge the coldness of the climate as an ad- 
ditional ground of constitutional objection. Was 
President Jefferson false to his country in 1803 ? 
or President Monroe in 1819 ? or President Polk in 
1848? or President Johnson in 1867? And who, 
in the face of the glorious events of last summer, 
will venture to make this charge; against our Presi- 
dent in 1898 ? — a history which challenges for our 



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country, as well as for the wisdom, sagacity. Hu- 
manity, moderation and firmness of our Chief 
Magistrate, the admiration of our own people, and 
the respect, to say the least, of the civilized world ? 

If the objection to the acquisition of the Phil- 
ippines be their insular position, their climate 
and their remoteness from Washington, then 
let the objectors say so, and cease to prate 
about national traditions and the policy of the 
fathers. Both the traditions and the fathers are 
point blank against them. The true question is, 
Can the United States afford to own, and can she 
protect and defend distant possessions acquired 
by lawful war, and valuable for the enlargement of 
her commerce and the extension of her trade in 
distant regions ? 

And what has the Monroe doctrine to do with this 
question ? What is the Monroe doctrine ? A shib- 
boleth, a political war cry, a Chinese mask which we 
put on occasionally to frighten our enemies. It is 
not to be found either in our Constitution or our 
laws, and has no basis either in natural or inter- 
national law ? Can anybody demonstrate it to be 
anything more than a bugaboo, which some sup- 
pose to be potent to hedge about the Western Hemi- 
sphere as a kind of defence against European di- 
plomacy and aggression, and to keep out kings and 
czars and emperors and such like. Philosophically 
and politically considered, anyone can see that the 



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doctrine has no other foundation than what is 
implied by the maxim sic volo sic jubeo — depend- 
ing altogether for its vitality, not upon natural 
reason or natural law, or the lex gentium^ but 
partly upon the respect which other nations may 
entertain for our power and position in the world, 
and chiefly upon our ability to enforce it — that is, 
upon the weight of our guns and the valor and 
skill of the men behind them , and neither of these 
considerations is likely to be diminished, but rather 
increased by our acquisition of these islands, now 
thrown upon our hands as one of the results of 
the war. 

What then has the Monroe doctrine to do with 
the present question ? Absolutely nothing at all. 
Was President Monroe, when he acquired Florida, 
or when, as Jefferson's Minister Plenipotentiary to 
France, he negotiated the treaty for the purchase 
of Louisiana, inconsistent with himself and flying 
in the face of the much-belabored doctrine which 
bears his name ? So much for traditions and the 
Monroe doctrine. 

Whether we shall ratify the treaty and annex 
these islands as territories to our domain, is un- 
doubtedly a question of great importance. It is 
not a question of constitutional power — the power 
undoubtedly exists — but of practical statesman- 
ship, to be dealt with as such upon principles 
which concern the national honor, public utility, 



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and the security and welfare of the government. 
The time will come when the legal argunient pre- 
sented against the measure will be read with sur- 
prise and regarded with as much curiosity as the 
white monkeys of Mindanao, which our extended 
commercial relations with these islands will prob- 
ably before long introduce to our Zoological Gar- 
dens. For what shall be thought of a nation that 
has not the power to add a mile to its territory, or 
to grow one inch beyond its present stature? 

But what shall we do with the islands ? '^ They 
are to be kept/' says Governor Boutwell, " in a 
condition of vassalage." '^ Having abolished one 
form of slavery," says he, '^ we are to create 
another form of slavery. Having emancipated in- 
dividuals, we are to enslave communities." " The 
Hawaiians," he says, " are now vassals, and the 
Americans their despots." It must be a jolly des- 
potism, indeed, that produces such an outburst of 
joy as that which we lately witnessed in Hawaii 
upon the annexation of these islands to the United 
States. But, seriously, is not this conservatism 
gone stark mad ? 

In the old days of slavery and reconstruction few 
grander figures rose upon our political horizon than 
that of Governor Boutwell, of Massachusetts — I 
speak of what I know and saw — and part of 
which I was — if it be not immodest in me, at 
this distance of time, to refer to that. No one 



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in those heroic days of the Civil War — which 
stripped off the adventitious trappings and false 
lights of all public men and revealed them in 
their real proportions — had a greater admiration 
for Governor Boutwell than the writer of these 
fugitive and soon to be forgotten lines, for well 
does he recall his genius, his eloquence, his 
straightforward honesty, his strong, masculine 
logic, his pure English and the irresistible flow 
of his impassioned oratory, which was wont to 
sweep before it all hollow pretences and all shams 
clothed in fine raiment, as the debris and float- 
ing wreckage of a majestic and swollen river 
are swept before its irresistible current when 
at flood. But somehow in these latter daj^s 
he seems not entirely the same. He looms 
upon us now like the portentous shade of some 
weird prophet of old Hebrew times, reminding the 
people of their sins and proclaiming the calamities 
which are to fall upon their country. He breaks 
upon our astonished vision in his pamphlet as the 
shadowy but gigantic outlines of the genie in the 
Arabian Nights rose before the terrified merchant, 
accusing him of putting his son to death with the 
date stones, which, during his repast, he was fling- 
ing upon the ground. The terrified merchant was 
unable exactly to realize his guilt, but under the 
circumstances he was inspired, nevertheless, with 
the highest respect for the genie. And so it should 



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be with us. With all his faults we love him still. 
It only means that the times, just now, seem to 
him to be out of joint, quite as much out of joint 
as they were with poor Hamlet : 

The time is out of joint. O, cursed srpite, 
That ever I was born to set it right ! 

Supposing, for a moment, that instead of all this 
frightful scare of the Philippines and the night- 
mare of coming ruin in their wake, we contemplate 
the subject through the medium of a cooler and 
clearer atmosphere than the tropical mists and 
mirage, which seem to have so transformed and dis- 
torted every image in the landscape, in the eyes of 
those who have lately undertaken to publicly crit- 
icize the policy of the President of the United 
States. 

Since we cannot, consistently with our national 
honor and with the obligations of duty which have 
arisen out of the circumstances attending the war 
and out of its results, return these islands and 
their inhabitants to the oppressive dominion of 
Spain, what other disposition is it possible to make 
of them except to retain, for the present, the sov- 
ereignty we have obtained over them, and to deal 
with them in the future, intelligently and consci- 
entiously, in the manner which our duty, our cir- 
cumstances and our ability may demonstrate to be 
just, wise and proper and in accord with the prin- 



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ciples wliicli underlie our own government. Who 
talks of vassalage and slavery and wanton viola- 
tion of the rights of communities and men, wastes 
his breath in absurd and useless rhetoric. He is 
fighting nightmares and shadows. No man of this 
generation and at this time of day can rationally 
believe that the United States will enter upon any 
such cruel and wicked policy, or that, forgetting 
their own history and the everlasting principles of 
liberty, equality and justice, upon which their own 
government is built, they will willingly become the 
oppressors of others ; or that any such proceedings 
would be tolerated by the seventy millions of free- 
men who repose in security beneath the flag which 
is the emblem of republican liberty, personal freedom 
and representative government wherever it flutters 
— whether it be in the icy winds of Alaska, or in 
the tropical breeze which ruflles the interlacing 
tides and channels that bind together, while they 
separate, the island empire of the Philippines. 

If it should be our duty at the outset, for the 
maintenance of order, and that we may lay the 
foundations of permanent and " free institutions in 
these islands, to rule them with the strong hand of 
military authority, and later by a form of terri- 
torial government akin to that which has been the 
mother of so many free and confederated States, 
which have grown from a feeble infancy to the full 
stature of independent and self-governing common- 



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wealths ; or if the day shall come, at some time in 
the future, when the inhabitants of these islands, 
having demonstrated their capacity for self-govern- 
ment, should desire to set up for themselves, and we 
should deem it wise to turn over the government 
into their own hands upon such terms as would be 
just to them and satisfactory to ourselves, which of 
us would repine while contemplating such an un- 
folding of the leaves of history, or such a result of 
American policy applied to its foreign possessions? 
The world was not made in a day. Neither do new 
States come to their maturity at a single heat. 

The question now is not of the future but of the 
present, and that question it is impossible for us to 
determine except in one way. For the present, at 
any rate, we must retain the conquest we have 
made, for the simple reason that no other way is 
open to us with honor and loyalty to our obliga- 
tions. Abandonment being out of the question, 
what else can we do ? Will some one say ? If any 
man can improve upon the honorable, just, patri- 
otic and manly policy of the President, let him 
show his hand. No one yet has ventured upon 
any alternative plan. Be not deceived. Retreat 
from our position — the lowering of our flag, the 
surrender of the solid advantages acquired by the 
courage and self-sacrifice of our sailors and sol- 
diers — these mean dishonor and national disgrace, 
by whomsoever proposed. 



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Let us not forget either our place in the world, 
or the age we live in. It is no part of our 
duty to embark in the business of making prose- 
lytes in foreign parts for the propagation of our 
political opinions. Neither does it become us, on 
the other hand, wherever our ships may ride at 
anchor and our flag may fly, to turn our backs 
upon our principles, or to be ashamed of the figure 
we have made in the world. There we stand — at 
the golden gateway of the East — examples and 
exponents — whether we will or no — of the liberty 
and civilization of this western world, confronting 
the ignorance, the superstition and oppression 
under which one-half of the earth has groaned for 
ages. Is it by accident and for no object in the 
Divine government of the world we live in, that we 
are there ? For one I do not believe so. 

The path is plain. Having settled what honor 
and justice and duty alike require of us, let us 
not be driven from it by cowardly fears or mis- 
givings of the future — but rather go steadily 
forward, unfrightened by the apprehensions of 
the timid, or the hesitation of those who always 
fear to take a forward step, even though the 
light of Heaven shines ever so clearly upon 
the path. It may be that out of our altered cir- 
cumstances — out of the present crisis in our affairs, 
out of the sacrifices and sufferings of our brave 
men, out of our altered and advanced position in 



21 

the world-;— a new day may break for the East as 
well as for the West, and the ancient prophecy, 

Magnus ab integro Saeclorum nascitur ordo 
ac toto surget gens aurea mundo. 

*be fulfilled for them, as well as for ourselves, but in 
a manner little dreamed of by the poet who sang his 
pleasant pastorals upon the banks of the Mincius. 



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